In a Colombia marked by violence, it would seem that some people and geographies count, while others do not so much. Enriched peoples who matter and inhabit geographies of accumulation and tranquility, often operating in the place of whiteness, contrast with other racially marked and impoverished peoples who inhabit geographies of dispossession and terror.

Eduardo Restrepo argues that this principle of intelligibility and structure of emotionality articulate a particular modality of constituting and maintaining social inequality, which beyond the economic and social processes of wealth appropriation, exploitation and dispossession, are tied to a hierarchical moral order that nurtures contempt that kills.